Motor drive control for trajectory of robot arm - has motor tracking checked by translational or rotational movements in conjunction with potentiometers and microswitches

摘要

Robot arm trajectories are translated directly from natural movements of a single hand via stepping motor commands from position transducers on the control mechanism. Linear and rotational potentiometers (30, 32, 34, 51, 61, 71) supply analogue signals to digital encoders from which robot motor drives are derived. A control shaft (24) is able independently to transmit orthogonal translations via sliding platforms (26, 27) and a pivoted slider (35, 38). Rotations (alpha, beta, gamma) are realised with a universal joint arrangement, sliding bearings (42, 43) and tracking mechanisms (44, 54). The control knob centre (40) forms the reference origin and is also the centre of spherical pivot cap (33) thus ensuring independent angular potentiometer measurements. In a variation of the design, robot movement is governed by motor tracking initiated and terminated by microswitches in the manual control. All displacements are automatically restored by springs (29, 31, 46, 56) to zero positions.